The Colorado Right to Know initiative in 2014 would have mandated GMO labeling.. Proposition 105 was handily defeated. (Thinkstock)

Larry Cooper, one of the driving forces behind the 2014 ballot initiative to require GMO labeling in Colorado, is urging Colorado’s U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet to maintain a vigil on a federal proposal to block states from addressing genetically modified foods.

He took issue with criticism of Bennet leveled by Farm Bureau Colorado President Don Shawcroft on March 16. Bennet voted against the legislation, because he thinks a better bill can come from a pending compromise, his office said.

Rep. J. Paul Brown said Friday that it’s in the entire state’s best interest to study the potential of one or more reservoirs on the Eastern Plains in the South Platte River basin to capture Colorado water before it flows away to Nebraska.

The bill passed out of the Agriculture, Livestock and Natural Resources Committee, 13-0, this week. The Republican from Ignacio saw a similar piece of legislation he sponsored get smacked down by the Democrat-led House Appropriations Committee over its $937,959 price tag. A leaner version this year comes in at $211,168. The bill now heads back to the House Appropriations Committee.

“It’s just a really important issue for the whole state,” Brown said. “It’s real important that we store that water we’re entitled to instead of losing it to Nebraska. We don’t have enough water on the Western Slope to keep sending more to the Front Range.”

Colorado House Majority Leader Crisanta Duran’s just keep rising. Last month she was named the state Democratic Party’s Rising Star. Friday she was announced as one of six finalists for the national Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star Award.

The award is bestowed by EMILY’s List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics. For Duran to win, her supporters need to vote online by clicking here. Voting ends on March 21 and the winner will be announced that week.

“Crisanta Duran’s leadership embodies strength, integrity, and dedication,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List. “Her efforts toward bridging the economic and social divide for all people does not go unnoticed, and it is why the EMILY’s List community of over three million members is proud to announce her nomination for this award.”

Speaker of the Colorado House Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, raps the gavel to end the 2015 legislative sessiion. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)

Democratic House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst of Boulder thinks Republicans aren’t seeing the big picture on the immediate budget problems looming for transportation, schools and the basic government needs that accompany growth.

“The legislative Republicans aren’t talking about the economic and social costs of making further cuts to our underfunded college and K-12 students and our overburdened transportation system,” Hullinghorst writes in an editorial. “They aren’t talking about the damage to our future prosperity and our competitiveness in a global economy.”

Hullinghorst and other statehouse Democrats, including Gov. John Hickenlooper, are asking to reclassify the state’s hospital provider fee as an enterprise fund so it would no longer fall under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. That way the state can keep money that TABOR would require to be refunded to taxpayers.

Sen. Matt Jones is a former wildland firefighter, here during the Dome fire in Boulder County in 2010.

Sen. Matt Jones says clean power means reducing climate change. And those who fight wildfires in the West — people such as him — see firsthand the effects of a hotter, drier planet. Seeing is believing in President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, from Jones’ point of view.

In an essayMonday, Jones said some Colorado lawmakers “don’t have that clean-Colorado vision.”

“They are running legislation, at the behest of corporate polluters and out-of-state billionaires, to make it impossible to clean up our energy supply or advance the Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon pollution,” Jones wrote.

Colorado’s plan is part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules aimed at reducing carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants.

What does Donald Trump mean to Colorado politics? For the smartest answer I could find on the Trump effect, I dashed off an e-mail to Kyle Saunders, an associate professor of political science at Colorado State University. Anyone who’s read many — heck, almost any — of my analysis stories might have guessed Kyle is one of my top go-to guys.

So in the whiplash of Tuesday night’s caucus, he’s the first person I asked Wednesday to size up the Trump effect in Colorado. It’s an interesting dynamic. Trump might be popular in other early-deciding states, but in Colorado, not so much. Other Colorado Republican candidates might not seem eager to have him leading the ticket, but they’ll accept it, because they might have to.

Three Republican Party leaders told me Trump did not look strong in Colorado Tuesday night. The New York billionaire looked like a distant third behind Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Their evidence was anecdotal, because Colorado didn’t hold a preference poll this year. That way the state’s GOP delegates could go to the convention uncommitted to a specific candidate, If there’s a brokered convention, uncommitted delegates will have an outsized value for the eventual nominee.

House Republican leader Brian DelGrosso of Loveland said it’s time for “honest fiscal policy” and not TABOR accounting gimmicks to pay for Colorado’s roads and bridges.

DelGrosso has penned an editorial laying out his — and presumably the Republican caucus’ — position on a Democratic plan to reclassify the state’s hospital provider fee to get it out from under a revenue cap voters approved in 1992 when they added the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights to the state constitution.

“Taking more money from taxpayers without their consent will not solve our challenges,” DelGrosso writes. “We have the money and our budget is growing, but using some budget maneuver is definitely no substitute for honest fiscal policy.”

Former Colorado tourism director Al White plans to run as an independent for state Senate this year. (Kathryn Scott Osler, Denver Post file)

Former state tourism director Al White plans to take on Sen. Randy Baumgardner for the state Senate District 8 seat this year.

White plans to run as an independent against the incumbent Republican senator from Hot Sulphur Springs and Democratic challenger Emily Tracy of Breckenridge. Tracy lost to Baumgardner in 2012 in the northwest Colorado district.

White, who lives in Hayden, represented the Senate district as a Republican from 2009 to 2011, before he became director of the Colorado Tourism Office for Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper. White served in the state House for eight years, as well.

West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant and Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams co-chair the Election Committee for the National Association of Secretaries of State. In July, Tennant and Williams will be competing for a National Association of Secretaries of State IDEAS Award. (Photo courtesy of the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office)

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office is going for a three-peat on innovation, dedication, excellence and achievement in service — the IDEAS Award.

The announcement of the final four for the prestigious prize broke at the National Association of Secretaries of State winter conference last weekend in Washington, D.C.

Colorado’s entry is its Accountability in Colorado Elections, or ACE. The program translates election data into easy-to-understand charts and maps. The media, as well as experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Minnesota, have lauded the program, according to the Colorado of Secretary of State’s Office.

Last week, Rep. Clarice Navarro of Pueblo laid out a Republican argument on funding state transportation, saying better priorities, not new revenue, provide the road to solving the problems.

This week Democratic Rep. Daneya Esgar of Pueblo offered a Democratic response: Revenue is the obstacle, as transportation falls far behind the pace of growth.

“Revenue is a problem because Colorado is dependent on the federal government for two of every three dollars we spend on capital construction on roads,” Esgar wrote. “Colorado’s gas tax, the next largest component of our transportation funding, has not changed since 1991, while inflation and improved vehicle fuel economy have steadily whittled away the buying power of our gas tax dollars.”

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.